Simon Cooper

So who was Julien?

Nobody knew.

Nobody I ever spoke to had any sense of him.

I didn't either when I started the book.

And I thought, I looked for the sources.

They're all in French.

Okay, I live in France, speak French.

So I thought, I'm going to figure out who this bloke was.

And I go out and I cycle out an hour out of Paris to his grave.

It was in a municipal cemetery, family grave.

I go there.

It took me half an hour to find it.

Obviously, nobody had been there in many years.

And there's a little gold plaque on the grave.

Julien May gives his dates, doesn't say what he did in his life.

He's really forgotten.

So if you find his memoir, which had to go to the French National Library to read, etc.,

who was this guy he's from a poor peasant family the parents move to paris they become grocers and he joins them in paris and so he lives among poor people there his family's low middle class he's a bright boy he studies law so he rises in the world but he lives among poor people and he thinks if poor men are going to play football seriously they have to be paid he was never really interested in playing football himself he just wanted to be a football administrator and very important part of his life stories in world war one for four years

It's amazing he survived.

He's in the trenches for four years.